


Books and Plants: Or, When the Bookshop Met A Lovely Lady Flat Who Rather Likes to Annoy Them, But That's Alright, Because They Like to Annoy Her Back

by D20Owlbear



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 100 percent a crack fic written for the theme "house and home", Aziraphale and Crowley aren't really named here, Because reasons I guess, Could be about anyone with sentient buildings, Ineffable Residences | Aziraphale's Bookshop/Crowley's Mayfair Flat (Good Omens), Other, POV Buildings, Rated T for i don't know what The fuck this is about tbh, Seemed the thing to do really, This is absolutely, Yeah that's right, You heard me, and a lot of leftover occult/celestial magic if you squint a bit, and by god did i take it too literally
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:34:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27964628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/D20Owlbear/pseuds/D20Owlbear
Summary: Anticum met Mayfair in the year 1967, when Mayfair had trailed some consciousness through Bentley’s keys and sat in on the conversation between her demon and his angel. Anticum was, of course, aware of the exchange considering it had happened on their turf, as it were. That first overlapping of consciousness was little more than a handshake, an awareness meeting another like it when surely they had thought they were unique, and alone.Purveyor Anticum is a bookshop, and they are, in fact, one of the oldest bookshops still standing. Likely in part due to their angel's assistance, but when things and places are loved so well by their inhabitants, well... they tend to take on a life of their own.Mayfair on the other hand, simply loved her demon so much that it brought her to life anyway. And really, sometimes that's all you need.That, and just a bit of magic.(You've heard of the BentleyBookshop ship, I raise you, their literal residences getting together faster than these two do.)
Relationships: The Bookshop/Mayfair Flat (Good Omens)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 22





	Books and Plants: Or, When the Bookshop Met A Lovely Lady Flat Who Rather Likes to Annoy Them, But That's Alright, Because They Like to Annoy Her Back

**Author's Note:**

> No, I'm not sorry for this. It's rated T because there's not _technically_ sex that happens, but it's very heavily implied that the buildings are getting on with it that, if they were human, would have been sex.
> 
> Let me know if anyone thinks I should up the rating at all for that, I'm happy to do so!

Crowley and Aziraphale—a demon and an angel, respectively—have been living in London, England for quite some time now. Far longer than either of them had been settled in one place, of course, but their residences have been with them for at least 200 years apiece. Crowley’s Mayfair flat — who rather liked the name Mayfair and called herself that quite happily — awoke sometime during his nap in the mid-to-late 1800s due to the sheer amount of demonic excess floating off as he dreamed by turns of things nice and not-so-nice. Aziraphale’s Bookshop — who fancied the name Anticum and title of Purveyor in part to match the angel in residence — had been quite awake and ready from the moment two other, unknown angels had begun loitering at their doorway just days before they were opened to the public. They were going to be rather cross if their angel was recalled so soon after they woke up, but luckily it all worked out well in the end. [1]

Over the course of two hundred years, the wards written into their structures—and blessed or cursed, as needed—grew and evolved. At first, the wards and magics only protected their immediate premises; perfect and unbroken concentric rings of ethereal and occult lights. The first sphere was made to gently nudge aside the attention of passers by, dimming all but the most persistent sparks of interest. Within this outer layer was the second sphere, designed with alarms to warn the occupant of any encroachment. In the third and final sphere, there were stronger barriers to deter, and measures meant to harm any who had made it past the first two circles of magic. This was true of both Mayfair and Anticum's wards.

Their form followed their functions — and vice versa — until form and function were nearly indistinct from another. between the rings and the loopholes to allow one specific angel and one specific demon to enter as quietly as they wished, they were able to create additional protections of their own devising. Made for the same purposes, and not with dissimilar temperaments, both Anticum and Mayfair managed to do quite the same thing with their vastly different materials; they created senses.

Mayfair, much like her beloved demon and The Bentley, liked things that went quickly. She thrilled at the changing of seasons and liked fussing with her interior temperatures, especially if she was cross with her demon for not visiting and gracing her stately halls as often as she felt he ought. And so, her senses grew quickly. She trailed after The Bentley a few times and tagged her senses onto the keys that resided in her just as often as in The Bentley or her demon’s pockets dimension. [2] Unintentionally, she grew fond of watching the swans and ducks in St. James’ park.

Pyr Anticum was older, a bit more methodical in their expansion—much like the angel that dwelt within—and most of all reliably safe. Anticum was the place people came to be protected, and held a protector of the earth and its people within, and they liked that. Their angel kept the wards powered and they kept watch over the angel in return, using pokes and prods—and occasionally new rooms or doorways—to remind their angel to renew or strengthen certain areas as they expanded their consciousness and also their floor plan. They liked to be useful and did their best to be accommodating to the angel, mostly by keeping all the holy artifacts occasionally left out in plain sight neutralized or otherwise hidden from the demon that visited. And that made their angel happy. By the late 1900s, after all the terrible business with the falling bombs was through, they had encompassed all of Soho in a perfect circle, overlaying the entirety of the grid in a slow and steady expansion of a number of square feet per year.

Anticum met Mayfair in the year 1967, when Mayfair had trailed some consciousness through Bentley’s keys and sat in on the conversation between her demon and his angel. Anticum was, of course, aware of the exchange considering it had happened on their turf, as it were. That first overlapping of consciousness was little more than a handshake, an awareness meeting another like it when surely they had thought they were unique, and alone.

Over the next few years, Mayfair tagged along each time her demon visited the shop, allowed within the wards Anticum’s angel had written that exempted the demon without hesitation. Mayfair, of course, counted within that exception — having been created from the very same occult magics that powered her demon — Anticum reasoned to themselves over and over, even as Mayfair played harmless fun on their angel. [3] She was younger than them, and it showed in a way, but mostly it just felt like a lot of the same sort of thing as the demon. A spontaneous high-rise penthouse always ready to carpe the diem and drag Anticum into it as well at the drop of a hat. [4]

And then an antichrist came and their routine was broken. Their angel and demon drank quite a lot and then left London altogether, leaving the two of them behind. So they waited and waited and only saw either of them much on alternating weekends. For somebuilding like Anticum, who was used to their angel settled in his chair or having tea or otherwise between their bookstacks, having him gone for so long was… unsettling. Mayfair was a little more used to it, even though she certainly didn't like having to be the one to keep the plants in line without her demon there to do so.

But they waited, just as any good building does, and they comforted each other and kept each other company where necessary in turn. Buildings were good at patience, even ones like Mayfair. And they visited each other, talking of their inhabitants and sharing what little news Bentley brought, until it became easier to simply… come together.

It was Anticum’s idea, for all that Mayfair was thrilled for it, merging their households. Anticum had a doorway [5] to an unused flat up past the railed stairs and Mayfair had a doorway into an unused closet into the master bedroom.

So, together, 10 years after the antichrist came to earth, a building in Soho and a flat in Mayfair folded the space between them to nothing in a way that would bind them together, until death do them part.

Their wards touched and overlapped slowly, and they took their time feeling all the shapes of each other. They slid together like water and found no obstacles; their concentric wards meshed and mingled together in hesitant overtures that grew more confident with every sigh of the wind and groan of their supports. Anticum mixed their spark of a soul with Mayfair's own, their consciousnesses a union of pure with pure in an ethereal plane above the city of London, neither desiring nor needing restraint between them. [6]

Mayfair's wards brushed along the bookshelves in Anticum and the loose pages on desks in them fluttered on unseen breezes, gently caressing every nook and cranny within, sighing all the while as Anticum returned the favor. They stretched out between their physical spaces and tangled together their essences until they became one, their wards shifting and changing as they pleased, rewriting themselves until the other was tattooed upon their very beings. It was the golden hour, the sun was preparing to set upon them, and rays of light turned all the city gleaming for just one moment and as day turned to night a flash of green escaped from the horizon.

Mayfair shuddered as the loophole of a door opened between them and her plumbing shivered as she felt Anticum connect with her and settle inside the master closet in the same moment so overtook and subsumed the unused bedroom in their flat upstairs. Their wards, previously only overlapping, had connected and circled around each other, their concentric rings of Enochian, Demonic, and a pidgin of the two meshed, shifting back and forth until the two settled within each other, their structures sighing in the pleasure of the belonging.

The wards wrapped around the two of them faster and faster, whirling with all the energies of a demon and angel who very much had already made An Exception for each other, and all the years they’d inhabited these places. Soho trembled and Mayfair groaned from the epicenters of this exchange of energy until the street lights between them flickered, the taps in Mayfair’s master bedroom fell open, and Anticum’s shelving trembled enough that some of their precious books fell open.

Anticum and Mayfair hummed pleasantly and exchanged a bit of energy to help clean each other up and put themselves back to rights after their joining over the next few days. After a few weeks, they were regularly exchanging energies and leaving their marks on each other’s insides to both of their delights.

And nearly a year after that, Anticum had burnt down. It was the worst day of Mayfair's entire memory. Her bookshop was gone, her wards broken without her other half, her best friend was gone through the ring of fire around London as a whole from which she was still reeling and only able to feel on one side of the city but knew it went all the way around, and on top of all that… her demon was gone too. She'd been left; with nothing to show for any of it except the general fear of the humans she'd done her best to protect alongside Anticum and hemorrhaging magic from the broken, jagged places burnt away in what was left of her wards.

Then, that night, her demon and Anticum's angel arrived, and they mourned for her best friend and her dear Purveyor. The next day—which had felt like so long to Mayfair—Anticum reappeared overnight,right as rain with stronger wards and even more interconnected with Mayfair as they were meant to be. But then her demon and angel went off again! No matter how hard Mayfair tried to keep them in her tightest wards, safe and holed up as best she could make them recently rejoined and whole with Anticum, only to let them be stolen by others she'd never hated so much until then. Later, Mayfair privately thought it might have been the shortest mourning period any sentient building had ever had, but never mentioned it if she could help it as it had been a rather rollercoaster of a weekend and she'd be pleased if it never happened again.

Another few weeks and their angel and her demon stumbled up Anticum’s handsomely curved staircase and barged through the bedroom door only to fall out the closet in Mayfair. Startled, the two human-shaped entities looked back and forth between the two abodes for a few moments before falling to the ground, half in one and half in the other, laughing in delight.

“See, angel? Even buildings are faster than us!” Mayfair’s demon crowed.

“Yes, my dear, keep in mind they’re spring chickens compared to us,” Anticum’s angel giggled back.

### Footnotes

1. that a demon also loitered after the angels had visited wasn't relevant to Anticum's concern that their angel might be caught up in the dreadful business of being recalled.↩

2. this is, of course, the dimension that connected to all of Crowley's pockets and occasionally the errant hollow in a tree if she didn't have any pockets available at the moment. Really, all it meant was that Crowley rarely could fit anything of consequence into their actual pockets, and this was far easier than carrying around a grand piano on the off chance that Aziraphale might like to play it.↩

3. among her favorites were moving everything not nailed down a half-inch to the left, and then two inches to the right later on; reheating forgotten cocoa only moments after the angel noticed it was cold but before he could do so himself, though Anticum allowed this far more often because of the sweet, worried look it caused the angel to cast at the demon; ; and all that sort, the exact same kind of mischief her demon played at.↩

4. If either of them wore hats, of course. Though they did occasionally hold hats on racks from which to drop them.↩

5. doorways were liminal things best used for the sort of connective magic Anticum and Mayfair wanted to perform↩

6. "In eminence; and obstacle find none / Of membrane, joint, or limb, exclusive bars; / Easier than air with air, if Spirits embrace, / Total they mix, union of pure with pure / Desiring, nor restrained conveyance need, / As flesh to mix with flesh, or soul with soul." from Milton's Paradise Lost, of course.↩


End file.
